The present invention relates to an apparatus for separating individual minute substances in a liquid from one another.
Fields of application for such an apparatus include an artificial seed making, in which cell lumps and adventitious embryos in a liquid such as culture fluid are separated into individual substances. In the field of artificial seed making, a method of making droplets is disclosed in Japan Patent Preliminary Publication No. 63-197530 and 62-266137. With this method, substances such as adventitious embryos to be sealed in artificial seeds are simply dispersed in a fluid by agitation.
In the artificial seed making field, Japan Patent Preliminary Publication No. 6-62917 proposes an apparatus which picks up one by one individual adventitious embryos present in a liquid such as culture fluid.
The former apparatus, however, has a very low probability that minute substances to be sealed such as adventitious embryos are contained in droplets. In other words, there is a high possibility that no substances to be sealed are contained in droplets. Hence, a need arises to sort out at a later process artificial seed capsules that can be used as products.
Further, in the former apparatus, there is a very low probability that each of the droplets contains a single minute substance to be sealed such as adventitious embryo, i.e., there is a high possibility that each droplet contains two or more substances. The present technology has difficulty in culturing embryos in large amounts and incurs a large loss during the production of expensive adventitious embryos.
The latter apparatus, though it has no such problems as those of the former apparatus, is not suited for separating lumps of minute substances to be sealed, such as adventitious embryos, into individual substances and arranging them in line, and thus has a limitation in making large amounts of artificial seeds in a short period of time.
Under these circumstances, it is an object of this invention to provide an apparatus capable of separating large amounts of substances in a liquid reliably. Another object of this invention is to provide an apparatus capable of isolating substances in a liquid into single substances in large amounts reliably.